The invention relates to a method for testing high impedance faults, which is based on transient traveling waves and belongs to the electric system protecting and controlling technique field. The method comprises faults actuating and faults testing, wherein the faults actuating adopts transient traveling waves electric quantity to judge actuating, The faults testing is actuated through comparing the transient traveling waves electric quantity and a threshold value. The fault testing adopts fault components to judge, faults testing results are output through an algorithm of fault detection. Three algorithms are adopted in high-resistance fault judgments, which include a high frequency algorithm, a harmonic algorithm and a fundamental wave algorithm. The three algorithms can be used in either a single end form or in combination to judge high-resistance actuating. The method can test thoroughly information of each main frequency band which may be produced when high resistance faults occur.